


Welcome to the Afterlife

by Radiolaria



Series: Meta Essays [6]
Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Afterlife, Archived From Tumblr, Archived From onaperduamedee Blog, Canonical Character Death, Character Death, Death, Fanwork Research & Reference Guides, Gen, Meta Essay, Nonfiction, Religion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-09
Updated: 2018-12-09
Packaged: 2019-09-14 21:39:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,138
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16920876
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Radiolaria/pseuds/Radiolaria
Summary: A reflection on Steven Moffat depiction of the Afterlife up until S8.





	Welcome to the Afterlife

**Author's Note:**

> Originally published on Aug. 31, 2014 on [onaperduamedee](https://onaperduamedee.tumblr.com/post/96292664753/hi-could-you-explain-what-you-mean-about-moffats) in answer to a question about Moffat and the Afterlife.
> 
> All transcripts are from chakoteya.net /doctorwho/ unless credited otherwise.

Steven Moffat’s view on Heaven was disclosed pretty clearly in Doctor who confidential’s “River runs deep”:

 

> If you believe in a soul, then you will say that she is not in the computer, that’s just a copy of her, that’s just her mind and her memories. **If you don’t believe in a soul -like me- then you think she’s a… then that is her, that’s everything about her, that’s all, that’s the crucial mental data, preserved perfectly within that computer**. **There is nothing else to keep.** Given the absolute straight choice between oblivion and the run of all human history and all human literature, I’ll take the run of all human history and all human literature. I think that sounds right quite a good retirement plan. That’s pretty much as close to heaven as you’re gonna get. And that’s what the Doctor gives River at the end. He gives her an eternal retirement which is, you know, nice of him.

(Transcript mine)

Moffat leaves the interpretation to the audience’s discretion. For someone believing in the existence of an afterlife, River is dead and what is inside the computer is an imprint, with a generated conscience akin to that of a robot. Of course, this raises the question of River’s copy status, a common trope in sci-fi: does an artificial intelligence have a soul? If so, is she deprived from ever finding her family in an afterlife? Is she condemned to just disappear with the computer?

Otherwise, for someone not believing in the existence of a soul, River is in the Library, that’s her essence, trapped in eternity or rather for as long as the datacore is running. Both are tragic, none offers peace in death and I do think Moffat wants it that way. In the end, Moffat’s Heaven **is a compromise, only better than oblivion** , a place to store a soul. It’s also a **virtual** one, as if any real Heaven could not be shown.

Whether or not you read –like me- River’s retirement as a form of hell -a golden cage is still a cage-, it is depicted in the show as a positive place after Charlotte became aware. It’s green, peaceful, filled with infinite knowledge and countless books, and memories, and friends. Clara could settle for that paradise. (Not really, but it is a nice place. For a limited stay.)

But Moffat could not quite settle for that. Death plays a huge role in series 7a and it was only a matter of time before Moffat’s Heaven made another appearance. Namely in the show in the form of the G.I.’s web of souls, pictured in “The Bells of St. John”. Clara doesn’t die in her first episode; she already did, and twice. But a fate worse than death is threatening her. The harvested human souls trapped by Ms. Kizlet and her team bear an uncanny resemblance with the “dead of the Library”.

Take the Doctor’s line in “The Bells of St. John”:

 

> Ms. Kizlet: We’re preserving living minds **in permanent form in the data cloud**. It’s like **immortality** , only fatal. 

> The Doctor: Imagine that. **Human souls trapped like flies in the world-wide web**. Stuck forever, crying out for help. 

> The Doctor: Then download the entire cloud. Everyone you’ve trapped in there.
> 
> Ms. Kizlet: You realise what would happen?
> 
> The Doctor: Yes, those with bodies to go home to would be free.
> 
> Ms. Kizlet: A tiny number. Most would simply die.
> 
> The Doctor: **They’d be released from a living hell**. It’s the best you can do for them, so give the order.

Ring a bell? From “Forest of the Dead”:

 

> Doctor: The data core. **Over four thousand living minds trapped inside it.**

> Evangelista: What you see around you, this entire world is **nothing more than virtual reality**.

> Lux: This is only half a life, of course. But it’s **for ever.**

If the Library’s datacore is Heaven, or as close to, the data-cloud is its dark counterpart. Two sides of a same coin. In the end, the datacore was “fixed” by CAL in FotD and the souls who still had bodies to return to were downloaded back from the data cloud in TBoSJ.

Only by introducing this parallel between the Library and the cloud, Moffat planted the idea of the afterlife as a trap, a “wrong” world in Doctor Moon’s words. Not knowing where you are or if you are alive or dead is a nightmare. Hell, to which “simply dying” is preferable. The subject is preserved in this amnesic state to be used as nourishment/tool –technically, River lent her memory to the computer. And it’s a recurring theme in series 7’s Moffat-penned episodes.

In “Asylum of the Daleks” and “The Time of the Doctor”:

 

> Harvey: I died outside, and the cold preserved my body. I forgot about dying.

> The Doctor: It’s a dream, Oswin. You dreamed it for yourself because the truth was too terrible.

> Tasha: Oh. I died. It’s funny the things that slip your mind. Ah!  

And most efficiently in the “Last Day”, “The Day of the Doctor” prequel:

 

> From now on the head-com is downloading into your memory, a  **tiny part of your brain is now a hard-drive**. It takes up hardly any space, you won’t feel a thing.

> [After the soldier saw a skull in place of his head in the mirror] It’s a hallucination. It’s okay, it’s not real.

> Okay, this is the official stuff. In the event of your death, **your head-com memories will be stripped from your cerebral cortex and uploaded to your family drives**. Anything gruesome of unsuitable for children, like actually dying for instance, will be tinted red.

(Transcript mine)

The boundaries between dream and reality, life and death are made to rupture and overlap, generally in an attempt to _draw_ from the persons. In this dystopian scenario, dead people are turned into things and exploited under the cover of a life that is not a life anymore. It is scary. Robbed from their life _and_  their death, those persons are floating in between, without a chance to rest, because they don’t even know where they are.

And now we meet a woman who appears to be Death itself, Missy, residing in what she calls “Heaven” –and calling the Doctor her boyfriend. Only, if Heaven as a concept equates with the Library, and the Library is the light side of the G.I.’s datacloud/Dalek conversion/Gallifreyan battle technology…  I let you do the math, but it doesn’t bode well for what’s actually Missy’s Heaven. And this is the terrifying part of Moffat’s Heaven in Who. And it’s _this series arc_.

You’re welcome. I’m ready for the nightmares. (Excited and ready, I must say because I found the concept chilling in the Library, choking in TBoSJ and utterly haunting in The Last Day).


End file.
